Planting Their Seeds In A New Community

Sunday services were spent driving up and down every street in the immediate community, praying over each home in the area.

"For God's favor and blessings and to make himself real to people and for people to know him," said the Rev. Don Rogers, who pastors All Generations Church in Newport News with his wife, Brenda. "For families to be restored, people to find purpose in life, hope."

They're small right now - about 80 people. More than half came from Crosswalk Community Church in Williamsburg, which wanted to begin planting other churches. All Generations is kind of like its little sister.

The public opening is Sunday at Yoder Barn Theatre, where the church has signed a one-year lease for morning services. (Rogers didn't want to say how much they're paying.) They've passed out cards and brochures to 5,000 homes in the surrounding area. Hopefully, a lot of young people will come, including college kids and people who are early in their careers.

Though the church is affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination, they have a nondenominational emphasis. The thinking is that "people, maybe, find denominations boring, irrelevant, focused inward."

"Kind of like (they want) to protect the culture of the church instead of impacting the culture of the community," said Rogers.

Case in point, he got a call from a woman one day who wanted to know if the church was going to do a bunch of clapping and dancing in the aisles.

Well, they certainly aren't going to discourage people from praising. She didn't like that, but Rogers said he understands that everyone has their own ideas about worshiping God.

All Generations wants to be focused outward, on people in the community who've never gone to church or haven't gone in a really long time. He's been preaching for nearly 40 years, has spread the Gospel in a couple dozen countries and wants to focus on people having a real, love relationship with God.

"We are what we call a presence-of-God-based church. Our focus is to love God and love people, in that order," he said from his home in York County. Rogers isn't a large, intimidating man, but speaks in a way that is focused and thoughtful. His blue eyes look intently from behind his rimless glasses, and he has short, salt-and-pepper hair, some of it missing from the top of his head.

He grew up a preacher's kid in Florida. "I was mean as hell," he says with a chuckle. "I was mixed up in high school. Half the time I wanted to be a mechanical engineer and the other half I wanted to be the town drunk."

When he was 17, he heard a friend talk about being saved and something shifted for Rogers. He became a Christian, went to Bible college and began preaching.

He and his wife have been married for 33 years and have two grown children. (Their son Matt is the young adult minister.)

They want people to find a genuine experience with God that gives them more than just intellectual understanding, but one that also touches the heart and the head.

ALL GENERATIONS CHURCH

The church's public opening is Sunday at Yoder Barn Theatre on Oyster Point Road, where the congregation will hold services for the next year. Sunday morning's speaker is Larry Hickey, the Potomac Assemblies of God superintendent. The featured speaker for the dedication service Sunday afternoon is Chaplain (Maj. Gen.) Doug Carver, chief of chaplains for the U.S. Army. He'll be talking about the importance of worship in times of war.

Worship service begins at 10 a.m. and the dedication service begins at 2:30 p.m. For more information, call 234-0131 or visit allgenchurch.com.